Yes, being an adult is truly terrible (or so we’ve heard). Of course, later we’ll hear about how terrible it is to be a kid – always being told what to do, etc. But rarely in the world do we hear about how being a kid has its own advantages. This is definitely something to keep in mind. Sure, you can’t drive a car when you’re young, but maybe there are things young people can do better.

This is Ender’s justification for wrecking Stilson – to send a message to all the bullies in school. (He has practically the same thought with Bonzo and his gang: “If I'm to walk away from here, I have to win quickly, and permanently” (12.92).) Although Ender doesn’t plan to kill these boys, he has a notion of winning “for all time” that seems more like war than, say, like a game. So we see pretty early on how war is a part of Ender’s life.

Here Ender comes out and says it: when he’s beating Stilson, he’s engaged in “warfare.” (Eh, haven’t we all felt that way about other people at school?) What’s also curious is that Ender realizes he’s acting in a way that will isolate him. By conducting war in this way, he’s making himself look like a monster or an animal. This leads him to question over and over whether or not he is a monster.

Well, that might sound like a terrible idea – hey, we have this kid, let’s surround him with enemies! – but that’s pretty much what they do. And this is in the very first chapter of the book. From the very beginning, we have the connection between Ender and isolation.

We first meet Ender as a kid who doesn’t have friends. Heck, his first wish is that his brother will simply allow him to live. That’s a pretty poor wish – he can’t even let himself hope that his brother might be his friend. All of this drives home the idea that Ender and friends don’t mix – like dogs and chocolate. Or something.

The first thing we hear about Ender is from the two military guys telling us that he’s probably “the one,” and pretty soon, we see some examples of what makes Ender special. He understands that “it won’t hurt” means “it <em>will</em> hurt,” and he’s just generally so beyond the other kids at school. Like, he hacked the computer network at school and told the other kids how to send messages. All of this seems to get the message across pretty clearly: Ender is great at what he does.

This is one of our first impressions of Ender. He's just been fretting about how Peter will react to the removal of Ender’s monitor, and now he’s worrying that he might turn out to be just like Peter. From the very first chapter, we see that Ender is almost as scared of turning into Peter as he is about being killed by Peter.